Using Amazon GameLift FleetIQ for Game Servers

Game server hosting requires balancing game business objectives with desired player experience, all while minimizing costs. Amazon GameLift FleetIQ with game server groups can help achieve this balance. In this course, you will learn to use Amazon GameLift FleetIQ with game server groups to host game servers on AWS. These game servers can supplement or replace on-premises resources, elastically adjust game hosting capacity to meet player demand, expand the geographic range of hosting locations, and lower costs by using low-cost EC2 Spot Instances to host games. FleetIQ game server groups can be integrated with your games without the need to rearchitect the game backend.

• Course level: Intermediate
• Duration: 90 minutes

Activities

This course includes videos, e-learning interactions, demonstrations, knowledge checks, use cases, and a final assessment.

Course objectives

In this course, you will learn to:

• Describe the key features and benefits of GameLift FleetIQ and how it compares to Amazon GameLift.
• Describe the elements of GameLift FleetIQ, what they do, and essential processes.
• Describe how to create and configure game server groups.
• Discuss game server group operation and configuration settings.
• Discuss configuration, operation, and management of game servers in the GameLift FleetIQ context.
• Describe the process of designing, developing, and implementing software integration of GameLift FleetIQ with a game.
• Discuss common use cases and business benefits for GameLift FleetIQ.

Intended audience

This course is intended for:

• Game developers
• Game architects
• Game operations professionals 

Prerequisites

We recommend that participants of this course have:

• Familiarity with game development and general knowledge of game server hosting on computers or in data centers
• Foundational understanding of cloud computing and AWS equivalent to AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
• Completed the Game Server Hosting on AWS course

Course outline

Lesson 1: Introduction

• Course objectives
• Course overview
• What is GameLift FleetIQ?
• Comparing Amazon GameLift with GameLift FleetIQ
• Knowledge check

Lesson 2: GameLift FleetIQ and Game Server Groups Fundamentals

• Game server group elements and structure
• Game server group lifecycle
• Game server group operations
• Putting it all together
• Knowledge check

Lesson 3: Creating Game Server Groups

• Creating a game server group workflow
• The AWS SDK and integration
• EC2 instance validation and AMI creation
• Launch template
• Demonstration: AMI and launch template summary
• Instance type list
• Auto Scaling policy
• Create an IAM service role
• Demonstration: IAM role required for GameLift FleetIQ to create the Auto Scale group and manage EC2 instances
• Demonstration: IAM role required for game servers to update GameLift FleetIQ
• Activity: Build the create game server group workflow
• Demonstration: Creating a game server group
• Demonstration: Monitoring the initial population of game servers
• Knowlege check

Lesson 4: Configuring and Operating Game Server Groups

• Understanding the relationship bewteen game server groups and Auto Scaling groups
• Making configuration changes
• Demonstration: Managing the game server group and the Auto Scaling group from the AWS console
• Knowledge check

Lesson 5: Managing Game Servers

• Game sessions and game servers
• Using Spot Instances with games
• Demonstration: Claim game server
• Demonstration: Update game server
• How Gamelift FleetIQ decisions are made
• Game server API calls
• Demonstration: Deregister game server
• Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch metrics
• Demonstration: Amazon CloudWatch metrics for GameLift FleetIQ
• Knowledge check

Lesson 6: Software Integration Steps

• Introduction to GameLift FleetIQ software integration
• Planning the software integration
• Software integration guide
• Example software integration implementation
• Demonstration: A simple example of a Python game server
• Knowledge check

Lesson 7: Use Cases

• Example game hosting configuration
• Cases: Increase capacity and control
• Cases: Lower hosting costs
• Cases: Resiliency and disaster recovery
• Cases: Data center flexibility
• Case: Improve latency
• Case: Geographic expansion
• Case: Containers

Lesson 8: Course Completion

• Summary
• Knowledge assessment
• Next steps